for later.

http://channel8.msdn.com/Posts/Social-Networking-is-it-making-you-anti-social/

Problem Bubble

This post deleted, because I can't find the picture, or the reasons I need to keep it.

Fake Plastic Trees

I wish my camera phone still worked, then this post would be littered with shots of the following outing.

Tonight, I was, as apparently, most dad's in our fair city were, of the mind that "McDonald's Playland on Clark Ln. sounds GREAT!"

I was right. It WAS great, and if you've ever been there, you understand about the trees.

But here is what it "connected" for me. (I know I know--you're thinking, maybe he could post MORE about connectivity today. Sue me. You'll get everything, which is nothing.) My son is 4. And as we might rhetorically say, "fairly kinetic". He eats (some) and then says, "I'm going up". I quickly take stock of his face, and after making small touchups, send him to play. This is how it works. He climbs the first two steps, is met by a little girl, who says, "Want to be my fwend?" He's all, "Yes" And it occurs to, me--that was JUST like a social networking site! It DOES happen in real life (presentation fives all around) perhaps it just doesn't happen for adults like it does for kids.

BUT, it gets better. And this is where I'm pretty sure I'm the only dad (and I'm not kidding about it being dad's night--there were lots) in the place thinking about social networking. He asks the girl her name, she says something... and she says, "What's yours?" And he says, "I'm Harry. Harry Potter." For the next hour, he is Harry, and she is his friend, and they make other friends, and don't seem really broken up when they separate to go back to their dads and their homes.

Maybe this is all a stretch, and I just wanted to post the neat link;) HOWEVER, I THINK that it's meaningful, given our prior discussions about the way Web2, the network, and our interactions seem to be different in terms of those same issues.

Day 4, sortve.

I missed Monday. Not like, "lost time" in the Fox Mulder fashion, but I didn't blog. I read some. "Connected". Form=Content.

Day 3...

god. Well that went as well as could be expected, given that I didn't prep them with an actual definition of rhetoric.

I had a single student, out of 40ish, that seemed to "get" it without me preaching.

However, what I also learned, prior to class, was that Heidigger (spelling...:(...) seems to have things to say about this idea of the social effecting everything we do. I should look into that. Thanks Todd.

Day 2

I was thinking today... about how my students didn't understand what I meant by "social" and how they are at the center of their giant networks, but don't see that as social, and thus don't see their writing as inherently so. I'm going to try to break them in during class in the morning. We'll see how that goes.

I'm also thinking a sociology of writing course would be a nice topics course for the coming semesters...

Past...

God...What seems like ages ago, I wrote this. It was purged for awhile, but it's in my head again, every day as I walk to teach or walk to class. The thesis that it came from was...well, it's done. This is where I think things are headed, if you're keeping track.


"What this study has done for me—in retrospect—is to highlight a part of a network, where our students find themselves at the nexus. I have said at multiple times throughout this process, that I was interested in their navigation, the navigation of the network that is their college experience. While compositionists and rhetoricians are turning towards networks as a way to educate students, to understand behaviors, to produce writing, and to generally better understand the environment that we, in our many roles (writers, teachers, scholars, humans) live in (Edbauer, 2005, Phelps, 1998, Shaviro, 2003), educational studies are highlighting networks as critical to student success (Bain, 2004, Light, 2001, McKeachie & Svinicki, 2006, Kuh et al, 2005). Again, in retrospect, Pintrich’s claim that context, including social and cultural forces, should be considered when looking at student motivation mirrors what composition theory is moving toward. At the beginning of this study, I only saw my desk in the Writing Lab, and later my classrooms, where this fluctuating population of students came and went, and I wondered how successfully they were able to make their transitions through later courses. These preliminary ideas led to a research project that seems to have led to more questions. At this point, I see the time that it took to complete this study, as well as the stumbles, trips, and falls that occurred along the way as stepping stones, rather than wasted time. While this was never meant to be a longitudinal study, I believe that research like this, in order to be truly successful, needs to be longitudinal. It also still needs to be focused on the students’ navigation—perhaps over their college careers, from their initial day in First-year composition, through their Writing Lab usage, through their WI courses, and finally, as they enter the job markets in their chosen degrees."

It felt really strange to just put quotation marks around something I wrote...